


All That's Left Is Dreams and Dust

by orphan_account



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-02-13
Updated: 2005-02-13
Packaged: 2017-10-15 15:31:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/162266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Xander is the only one left, alone and depressed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All That's Left Is Dreams and Dust

Scattered in your dreams are snips and pieces of high school--- the awkward jumper dresses Willow would wear, the sensual sway of her long straight hair, Jesse leaning awkwardly against you the first time you ever drank rum, the taste of Cordelia’s skin under your tongue, Giles cleaning his glasses, Buffy’s smile and then her body caught mid-motion, suspended in time in a kung fu kick.

You finger your empty eye socket, a habit that made the last girl you slept with (her name was Tanya, or maybe Tasha) throw up, and remember being whole. It’s not that you want to go back to high school (maybe you do, just a little) but time lapsed makes it seem more idyllic than it ever was, ever could have been.

You’re alone on a twin bed and the hotel room smells like cheap cleaning products and lingering dust. You remember sitting with Willow one night, freshman year, when she told you in an excited voice all about dust molecules, and how most of it was really shed, dead skin cells.

You think of the billions of skin cells you’ve shed, and how the Discovery channel told you last night that the cells in your body regenerate constantly, so that you’re not even the same animal you were five years ago. Not the same beast, let alone the same soul.

Old age (twenty-seven seems old, and you can’t imagine living to thirty) has turned you at once philosophical and sentimental. You’re like a non-bloodsucking version of motherfucking Angel. There’s a time when that would have bothered you, but now you’re past caring, past poking fun at yourself or anyone else, past giggling or crying.

Angel’s dust now too, just like the skin from the tips of your fingers, the pad of your thumb that stroked Anya’s plump nipple.

There’s a parade of your dead in your head, a montage of windy graveyards across the globe. Tara, Anya, Cordelia, Angel, Spike. Buffy, Willow, Faith, Giles, Andrew.

Only you and Dawn survive, and she hasn’t called you in months.

You lie in bed, cold, alone. You shake your limbs, grasp your cock, sing songs hoarsely as the caffeine streams through your blood. Anything to stay awake. You don’t want to fall asleep. You can’t fall asleep. Because when you sleep you see them all, you feel the way you did when you were with them, and everything was new. Your world was young.

Of course, you finally succumb, and the ghosts caress you. When you wake up, you’re crying, and still utterly alone.


End file.
